


The Drunken Night, The Patron Saint and The Random Kitten

by pearlydewdrop



Series: Punching in a Dream [2]
Category: Derry Girls (TV)
Genre: Arguing, Cats...Booze...and all sorts of crazy shite!, Confusion, Denial of Feelings, Drunken Shenanigans, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Inspired by The London Irish, Kinda daft..., Morning After, Mostly just the gang goofing around!, St. Patrick's Day, Stupidity, They've one braincell between them...just the one!, hopefully funny!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29779074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearlydewdrop/pseuds/pearlydewdrop
Summary: Head pounding, Erin reached blindly for her duvet covers but found none. Her mind swam with foggy memories of Paddy's Night out with the gang in London.Oh Feck!
Relationships: Clare Devlin/Original Female Character(s), James Maguire/Erin Quinn, The Friendship Between All Five Derry Girls
Series: Punching in a Dream [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2027156
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19





	The Drunken Night, The Patron Saint and The Random Kitten

_**1999** _

_Oh Feck!_

Head pounding, Erin reached blindly for her duvet covers but found none. 

Her mouth was as dry as sandpaper and her throat, thick with saliva, burned like no man's business. Sunlight poured into the room from the chink in the window blinds. It woke her as soon as it hit her. 

Her head swam with foggy memories of Paddy's Night out with the gang in London. 

To varying degrees, they'd all been driven by Michelle's fervent insistence that, even though they weren't at home anymore, their not ending St. Patrick's Day absolutely wallpapered would be the very worst kind of insult to their heritage.. _.or something._

Ears ringing, Erin tried to blink it all away. 

_Warm_. She may not have had blankets of any description but Erin was so warm. Warm enough to sleep for days until the worst hangover in history had fucked right off. 

A familiar pair of arms were wrapped loosely around her. Nuzzling further into his embrace, Erin grumbled out a hoarse string of expletives into the space just below his ear. _His_ ear. _His_ embrace. _His_ arms. 

Her brain slowly joined up the dots...

_Oh Feck!_

Heart racing, Erin cracked one panicky eyelid open. 

Hair tussled from a mixture of sleep ( _and presumably her wayward fingers at some point during the night_ ), James was snoring soundly beneath her--blissfully unaware of the killer hangover awaiting him. 

She made a quick glance downwards, fearing the worst. Wrapped around each other though they were, both of them were still very much dressed from head to toe. 

_Oh thank christ..._

Erin released a shaky breath, hastily disentangling herself from James's embrace. 

Surely, finding both of them fully clothed was a decent enough indication that nothing of _that sort_ had happened between them the night before? She wracked her brains for the memory of something, anything!...she found nothing.

People didn't usually unpremediatedly shag one of their closest friends, did they? _Course not..._

James smiled softly in sleep, reaching out for Erin as she shifted herself from between his arms with as much grace _(very little grace...)_ as she could muster. Cheeks burning, she blamed it solely on the remaining alcohol in her system when her fluttering heart unexpectedly insisted that her sleeping best mate looked absolutely adorable first thing in the morning. 

Like Erin said, if anything had happen between her and James the night before?... _Definitely definitely unpremeditated..._

Tearing her eyes away from him, she blearily took in her surroundings. At the last second, Erin just about managed to avoid smacking her forehead hard against some random wooden object looming above her like a low ceiling. 

_Wait what?!_

For the first time since waking up, Erin suddenly realised that she and James were most definitely not in bed. 

In fact, they were somewhere entirely _entirely_ unfamiliar...

_Oh Feck!_

Having curled up in a drunken lump on the carpet, they were lying beneath a wee coffee table on the sitting room floor of someone's house. A house, Erin was certain, that she'd never so much as set foot in before in her life. 

"Oi, James!", Erin hissed, prodding him firmly on the chest. She didn't really care what they'd done or not done the previous night anymore, all she wanted was to not be alone in her confusion. "James, wake up!" 

He grumbled quietly but didn't move very much. 

"I think he's dead!" 

Whirling around to confront whoever had spoken, Erin crashed straight into someone else...someone who'd apparently been stretched out next to her and James, not bothering to wake either of them, for God knows how long!

—Orla. 

"Ach great, you're here too!", Erin grumbled, blinking as she was fully assaulted by the sights and sounds of her immediate surroundings. 

Orla saluted cheerfully, looking way too much her usual self for someone who had been out on the town until the wee hours of the morning. 

It was only then that Erin noticed that she, herself, hadn't been the only one to wake up cuddling someone cute and fuzzy...

"Where'd that wee fella come from, eh?" 

"I dunno. Is he not yours?" 

"I don't own a flippin' cat, Orla!"

For a moment, both cousins gawked openly at the tiny black kitten curled up and purring in Orla's lap. Erin tried to make sense of the bizarre situation she'd just found herself in...but, as per usual, failed miserably. 

Certain things, she'd learned quite some time ago, just couldn't be explained... 

"I'm namin' him after that detective fella", Orla hummed, scratching behind the cat's ears. "Ach, y'know yer man from that one place?" 

"Yeh'll probably have to narrow that down a wee bit for me." 

"The place that's _exactly like_ Ireland but completely _completely different_!" 

Erin huffed, almost immediately giving up on deciphering Orla's frankly useless tangent. She circled the room like a hungry shark in search of a clue ( _any clue!_ ) that might reveal who's house they'd passed out in. 

"Ya can't go around namin' other people's cats!", she snapped absentmindedly, only half listening as her cousin ploughed on with her story from the night before. "Sure, he probably belongs to whoever lives here!" 

"...Scotland!", Orla declared excitedly, clicking her fingers. "I'm namin' him after that class-out detective fella from Scotland! Sure, ya remember us gettin' in a bar brawl with him last night! It was so cracker!" 

Erin screwed up her nose in annoyance, finding that her inner Jessica Fletcher had totally abandoned her. 

Despite having watched a ridiculous amount of _Murder She Wrote_ over the years, she still couldn't find a single useful photograph in the whole bloody sitting room. Nothing but wanky wee paintings and other artsy shite that she'd have thought was pretty savage under different circumstances but now just pissed her off. 

"Taggart? We couldn't have been in a bar brawl with Taggart!", Erin spluttered out in frustration, unable to stop herself from chastising Orla in spite of the circumstances. 

_Maybe they'd broken in? Or maybe they'd been kidnapped...adultnapped, even! Holy Mary Mother of Fuck!!!_

Orla shook her head determinedly. 

"We were too, Erin! Michelle pure lamped him and then that Taggart fella got the barman to kick us out, probably because he's so high up in the police force! Pullin' strings mornin', noon and night, our Taggart!" 

Positively thundering with impatience now, Erin was ready to set off into the rest of the house--praying that she'd run into Michelle and Clare.

Maybe some mate of theirs' lived in the house! _Hopefully..._

"Taggart's not a real detective, Orla! He's an actor, an actor who's been dead for nearly ten feckin' years! So unless Michelle went diggin' the bake off a ghost..." 

"...what ghost are we talkin' about here?", Michelle asked casually, materialising at the door of the sitting room in a cloud of blue-white cigarette smoke. 

Much like Orla, she too looked annoyingly no worse for the wear— aside from the words 'Buck Me, I'm Irish!' that were splashed across the front of her t-shirt in bright green paint... _very subtle._

"There's no ghost, Michelle!"

"Ach shame, love that film! Patrick Swayze is _such_ a ride!" 

"Any idea who's house this is?"

The dark haired girl shrugged nonchalantly, tendrils of smoke curling out through her nostrils. "Not. A. Baldies! But it'll all be grand! Clare's ringin' her lass to pick us up...she's cackin' it, so she is! What a dose!" 

Practically purple with stress, Erin rounded on Michelle. "How can Clare ring Aoife if NONE of us know where we are? How'll she know where to pick us up?" 

Michelle nodded vaguely, almost as if she'd suspected something was off with her and Clare's top-notch plan all along. "Oh yeah..." 

That was when the door crashed open once more. Surprisingly, there was a hell of a lot more force behind it this time. 

Without ever really looking at any of them, Clare began pacing up and down the room, slowly starting to hyperventilate. Not being able to tell Aoife exactly where they were had really thrown the poor little hungover blonde for a loop. 

"Why did we even have to go out last night, eh? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

Michelle snorted at her friend's antics, picking at her nails. "Ach, Clare. Don't go gettin' yer fanny in a flap, will ya? It was Paddy's Night! Sure, nobody'll expect anyone to be anywhere useful today..."

Clare chortled nervously, sounding as though pure mania was rapidly decending upon her. 

"We're in England, Michelle. England! Home of the... _English people!_ I don't think celebratin' Saint Patrick is a top priority over here! Y'know, come to think of it...I'm really strugglin' to see why we make such a big feckin' deal about our patron saint? Like, what did the fella even do?" 

Open mouthed and shell-shocked, Michelle and Erin fell silent. 

By no means were they a pair of clear headed individuals themselves, but even her two best friends took a few steps back when a truly wound up Clare Devlin stepped forward. _They hadn't a death wish, like!_

Orla raised her hand carefully, still sat on the floor beside one Mr Taggart and a snoring James. They may as well have been back in the classrooms of Our Lady Immaculate with Orla ready and waiting to answer some absurdly specific question on her beloved Oliver Cromwell. 

"Saint Patrick invented Guinness, so he did Clare! And he killed all the snakes in Ireland—"

Clare cut across her, completely spiralling out of control. 

"Yeah, well me and you could kill snakes, Orla! Me and you could go out there right now and kill a whack load of snakes! God's sake, the English don't make such a big feckin' fuss about their patron saint! Why do we have to?" 

Michelle quirked a mildly quizzical eyebrow, finally certain that they'd broken Clare. "Do the English even have patron saints?", she asked, remaining every bit as cool as cucumber. 

Orla nodded in response, gently covering Taggart's ears before whispering.

"Aye! Sure, the English got lumped with that George fella. Y'know yer man who sent that poor wee dragon for the chop? All those saints are fierce for harmin' wildlife! Absolute disgrace, they are!" 

Michelle smirked, not unkindly. "A dragon's not wildlife, Orla..." 

"Noooo! Really?" 

"I'm fairly sure dragons are more, like...mythical or somethin'? Ask Dicko when the lazy fecker gets up, why don'tcha? He's into nerdy crap like that."

Erin screwed her nose in annoyance.

Just as Clare began to catch a breath for herself, the other blonde's floundering anger had decided it was just about time to flare right back up again. 

"Y'know maybe it might be an idea...", she said, beginning diplomatically before completely loosing her shit. 

"...If we left the dragons and the saints for now and circled back around to the fact that we're BASICALLY LOST and none of us have a clue where THE ACTUAL FECK we are?" 

"...I know where we are." 

Whirling around, the girls fell silent as they regarded a suddenly fully conscious James. Still sat on the floor, he looked up at them completely discombobulated, looking more awkward and out of place than he had upon first arriving in Derry five years earlier. 

Something told them it had absolutely nothing to do with the hangover... 

"A'right over there, James?", Michelle asked, a twinge ( _only a twinge, mind!_ ) of concern entering her voice. 

Erin bit her lip, voice trailing off—feeling the need to give James's hand a good comforting squeeze. Clare opened her mouth to say something sensible, but managed nothing. Orla reached out, seamlessly dividing her time between patting the heads of James and Taggart. He was too numb to swat her fingers away. 

Presumably drawn towards the loud racket that they had just made, the door unexpectedly cracked opened once again—softer this time. 

Standing before them was a tall and elegant women in silk pyjamas.

Her nose was held aloft as she stared them down, as if judging them on the rough night they'd had. _As if she hadn't done worse herself back in the day..._

Sure enough, it was woman with a pair of killer queens at her disposal.

Long ago she'd rejected the accusing wraggling of fingers and the outstretched wooden spoons of her foremothers. Instead, she had a pair of eyebrows...sharp and piercing enough to strike down even the best and the bravest of souls.

Kathy Maguire, in the flesh. 

There were many things she could have said to the band of shambolic youngsters scattered throughout her sitting room; the son who she hadn't laid eyes upon in over four years, the niece she hardly knew at all, the girl who'd spent the night _(or rather morning)_ curled up like a koala beside her boy and the other girl who still seemed likely to return to giving some long dead saint a piece of her mind once they'd returned themselves to a more comfortable setting...

Instead, Kathy's scrutiny was captured by another pair of individuals altogether—

"Who owns the cat?—"

—Orla and Taggart. 

_Really? That's what she had to say..._


End file.
